Homily—16th Sunday in O.T.

"The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field…”

Today we continue with the series of parables to the crowds that Jesus began last week with the Parable of the Sower. Jesus had gone out of the house where he was staying and sat down by the sea. The crowds were so great that he got into a boat and sat down while the whole crowd stood along the shore. God, the sower, scatters the seed widely, across all kinds of surfaces, whether they are suitable for receiving it or not, as if unconcerned aboutwhere it falls. But only the seed that falls on rich soil bears fruit. This is the one, Jesus explains, who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty of thirtyfold. 

We must always strive to become the rich soil. In all of his parables, Jesus always demands that the seed that is scattered, the talents that are given, must bear fruit. The kingdom is for those who bear fruit. 

This initial parable sets up the crowd for another parable of the sower. This time the sower, the Son of Man, sows good seed, but while everyone was asleep his enemy, the devil, came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. 

It is widely accepted that today’s parable is based on a similar parable in the Gospel of Mark. In that parable, the sower scattered seed on the land and then slept and rose night and day. Meanwhile, the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. God stands back, so to speak, to see how the seed responds. 

We have a similar situation here. The seed that God sows is good seed, but he doesn’t prevent the evil one from scattering his own seed. God gave us freedom to continue to grow in the good, in him, or to fall under the influence of the evil one and become his children. That the seed that is sown is good is not an invitation to fall into a spiritual slumber, to let down our guard. We must remain watchful against the invasion of the seed of the evil one in our own hearts and in the hearts of our brothers and sisters. 

After Jesus has dismissed the crowds and gone back into the house, he explains to the disciples that the field into which the Son of Man scatters the good seed is the world. The world contains both wheat and weeds, children of the kingdom and children of the evil one. It is impossible to separate the weeds from the wheat. And so will it be until the harvest at the end of the age. The church is not of the world, yet she is in the world, so she is made up likewise of wheat and weeds and so it will be until the harvest at the end of the age. 

The task that falls to us all  is not to separate the wheat and the weeds but to struggle for everyone to become wheat, starting with ourselves, so that when the Lord sends his angels at the harvest we can all be gathered in as the “righteous” who “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father.” 

The tenor of the whole parable calls us all to penance and conversion. For example, in the main parable, the householder says to the harvesters, “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.” These words call to mind the words of John the Baptist back in chapter 3: “His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” John’s message was directed to the whole of God’s people, Israel, Everyone was called to repentance in order to prepare the way of the Lord. Even Jesus was baptized. Whose soul among us is without chaff? God burns it away now and forever when we approach him with a sincere and contrite heart in the sacrament. 

The parable of the mustard seed reminds us that the Kingdom of Heaven begins small, but it is destined to grow to a size beyond all expectations.

In my view, if we are to grasp the meaning of this parable it is important to note the qualifier “full-grown”. It is when it is “full-grown” that the tiny mustard seed becomes the largest of plants. When is the Kingdom of Heaven full-grown? Only in the age to come. Never here on earth. Here on earth we only catch glimpses of it. We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, if on the one hand the kingdom of heaven appears to us as no more than a seed at anytime in world history. Nevertheless, at the same time, these seeds are everywhere for those who have the eyes to see them. This is the consistent teaching of the early monks, that as we grow in the spiritual life and in the life of prayer, we learn to see, to discern, the ‘logoi’, the words, the seeds of the Kingdom, Christ, in all around us.

Lumen Gentium, the document on the Church from the Second Vatican Council, describes the church herself as only a seed of the Kingdom. The Church is the “universal sacrament of salvation” who received from Christ the mission to” proclaim the and establish the Kingdom among all peoples.” But at the same time, the Church is “on earth, the seed and beginning of that Kingdom”. 

There is a line of interpretation going back at least to Hilary of Poitiers in the fourth century that sees Jesus as the mustard seed. According to Hilary, the sowing of the mustard seed signifies the death and burial of Jesus. Through his Cross and Resurrection he now reigns over the whole world. 

His Kingdom is operative wherever his grace is operative. In the hearts of the poor of the beatitudes, in those who hunger and thirst for justice, wherever the world is being sanctified, the Kingdom is at work. Christ is to grow in the children of the Kingdom until they become so conformed to him, so like him, as his body, that they can say with Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” They are to fly with the joyful freedom of the birds of the sky and find their dwelling place in its manifold branches.

Lastly, for St. Augustine, the woman in the parable of the leaven calls to mind the biblical figure of Wisdom, while the yeast is love, dilectio, love which has its source and goal in God, but which at the same time is a human love, which warms us, fills us with the driving force of ardent, fervent love, and the desire and capacity to cherish God above all things and our neighbor in and through him. The three measures of flour evoke man – who is commanded to love with all his heart, with all his soul and with all his mind. 

The source, the living streams of this love, which is to take over our whole beings, is present and offered to us here in this Eucharist.